July 8, 2015

Avatars of War Doomcrusher's pictures & unboxing

Further to my post this morning about the Avatars of War Doomcrushers that I recently received I finally got the pics I took while unpacking them off my phone.

Front of the box

My kids got extremely excited when they saw the box the models came in as it looked like a PC game or DVD case (they were hoping for something Star Wars related).

Back of the box

That picture on the back of the box is important as its the only guide you have to putting the models together. Now even if you are an experienced gamer and have put together 100's of models you will struggle with these things as there is really only 1 way to put the pieces together properly and get a unit that is capable of ranking up.

How the pieces came

Each of the 3 big bags contained the parts for 10 models - each set of 10 was identical - the smaller bag contained command stuff including a banner (which was pretty cool), 3 drums for musicians and an alternate musicians horn.

What you get in one of the bigger bags - as a side story the pocket knife bottom right has been helping me with model making for 33 years now. Got it from Dad when I was 8 and its still going strong.

All the pieces laid out - 10 per row.

In the picture above you have in each row moving from left to right the: left arms, legs, right arms, hammers, and heads for each model. The heads were a bit strange as every beard had an indentation in it into which you fit the haft of the hammer the model was carrying. Nice I suppose for keeping things ranked up but it complicated assembly as only certain hammers fit certain beards, only certain arms fit certain hammers and so on....

The 5 models I managed to assemble

Gave up after putting 5 together as they were driving me nuts. Had to use a combo of superglue + plastic glue as either by itself didn't work ?!?

Close up of the back - its ok but the armoured skirt is really the only decent piece of sculpting

Every shoulder pad was different giving the models a lot of variety which was kind of cool

This front on photo shows the lack of detailing in the model. The armoured skirt is just awesome but the rest lacks a lot of detail. The beards lacked the fine lines you get with GW Dwarfs that show all the strands of hair and the faces for most of the models looked squashed in.

Finally some size comparisons against one of my old school Metal Hammerers and one of my Quarrellers.

Overall, the models are OK and I think painted up they would actually look pretty good on a table top but in terms of detailing the GW plastic Hammerers are far superior. Ranking the GW models up would have also been far less fiddly and the models themselves more assembly friendly.

Compared to their Dwarf Slayers they are not as good simply a good try, and they don't hold a candle to their character model series.

3 comments:

I can certainly understand your disappointment and frustration there John. Especially after the delay in models arriving.

For myself I love the AoW character models, but not so sold on their regiments. The regiments seem rushed, and are disappointing by comparison (to the characters).

Not a huge fan of GW Dwarves myself modelwise either... but for anything against GW... gotta admit their casting, assembly, and (aside from the failcast episodes) what their models are made of... is top notch in comparison to the rest of the suppliers in the market.

Like you I have stuff that will arrive and AoS has destroyed what I planned for them. I pre ordered the AoW Marauders, still waiting....

I do already have a box of the AoW corrupters of the apocalypse with two handed weapons. Totally not nurgle warriors of chaos with great weapons. I will agree they were a nightmare to put together - all in bags with no instructions. Like you I had to separate them out before even approaching. I had to paint their position on the bottom of the base as they only rank up one way.

I did find that once together - the detail and dynamic nature of the models really looked good.